We now have the answer to the question, “What if Death Cab
for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard had written The Wall?”

OK, so, maybe it wasn’t exactly a burning question. But for
certain types of pop-music fans in the audience, Spring
Awakening, the Tony Award-winning musical, will certainly
call to mind literate emo bands like Gibbard’s outfit or the
Decembrists; and the play’s plot—focused on the institutional
repression of authentic identity by parents, priests and pedants—will
seem a direct descendant of Roger Waters’ angsty opus. Surprisingly,
given the high mope factor in both those apparent influences,
Spring Awakening is an enormously—of all things—fun
musical.

Fun, despite its rather dark subject matter. Though this is
essentially an ensemble cast, the main dramatic thrust concerns
the trials of Melchior (Jake Epstein), a 19th-century German
schoolboy. Melchior is a promising young scholar dabbling
with freethinking, atheism and a hedonistic sensuality. In
other words, he is a teenage boy. Of the boys in his all-male
school, Melchior is the most assured and confident in his,
mostly intellectual, forays into liberation (with the possible
exception of the gay student Hanschen, who is given an urbane
and somewhat predatory air by Andy Mientus). But when he crosses
the line from lusty thought to action with his childhood friend
Wendla, they discover quickly the cutting edge of passion.

As Melchior and Wendla’s relationship plays out to disastrous
consequences, we see, too, the varying effects of unrestraint
on the circle of their acquaintances: Ilse (the beautifully
voiced Steffi D) has dropped out and become a kind of groupie/plaything
for what sounds like a Vienna Secession commune; Martha (Sarah
Hunt) is victimized in an appalling way by her parents; and
Melchior’s floundering and fuddled classmate Moritz (the delighfully,
convincingly awkward Taylor Trensch) gives way fully to adolescent
depression. Unwanted pregnancies, dangerous abortions, S&M,
domestic abuse, incest, suicide—a far cry from dog bites and
bee stings, eh, Frau Von Trapp?

But, as evidenced opening night by the crowd’s enthusiatic
laughter, the musical is given a great deal of levity by its
musical numbers. This works in two ways: First, the music
by Duncan Sheik provides really spot-on emulation of catchy
post-grunge pop; with tolerably snot-nosed, punky lyrics by
Steven Sater, the upbeat numbers, especially, are memorable
singalong sneers. “The Bitch of Living,” for example, and
“Totally Fucked” are just shocking enough in the grandeur
of Proctors (and, yeah, I’d forgotten, wow!) to feel fist-in-the-air
rebellious. Secondly, the ballads, while for me less engaging,
focused less on furthering or punching home plot as they did
on maintaining a general wash of emotionality.

This sounds like faint praise, but it worked well to lighten
the load of the dramatic events. The point, it seems, of Spring
Awakening is not so much what happens, but what is felt
about what happens—and largely, despite the specifics, you
are meant to feel good.

With its blue language, brief nudity and simulated sex, Spring
Awakening is a remarkably risque staging for this area;
but its good heart, tasteful and clever staging (seating a
modest number of audience members in bleachers stage right
and left was a nice touch; scattering backup singers in modern
dress throughout those bleachers was a very deft way of connecting
through the fourth wall and through time), and universally
high quality of singing talent easily won over, and held,
the crowd.